Fluid flow transducers are widely used to measure the flow of fluid materials. Gas flow transducers are used throughout the microelectronics industry, for example. The measurement and control of gas flows must be very precise in this industry. The vacuum technology used in the microelectronics industry requires small but precise gas flows. These small flows permit a flow meter to be located inside a gas delivery tube. Other industries require large gas consumptions. In such industries, a small fraction of the delivered gas may be routed through a bypass tube. The gas flow is often measured in this bypass tube, and the measured flow is then multiplied by the ratio of total gas flow to the gas flowing in the bypass tube. Fluid flow transducers are also used to measure the flow of liquid commodities. For example, chemical companies use fluid flow transducers to measure the flow of liquid reactants used in a chemical reaction. The precise measure of the flows of multiple reactants may be critical for maintaining a proper stoichiometric ratio for a reaction.
Many disturbances can make precise flow measurement difficult to realize. Noise in power supplies can deleteriously affect the measurement result of a fluid flow transducer, for example. Chemical reactions between a flowing commodity and a fluid flow transducer may degrade the measurement precision of the instrument. Different chemical compositions having the same flow rates may produce different measurement results in many fluid flow transducers. Even identical chemical compositions at identical flow rates may produce different measurement results if the temperatures of the chemical compositions differ.